DATE: 2ND NOVEMBER
1999.
SHOULD AGE
RESTRICTION BE PLACED ON TELEVISION
VIEWING?
I
remember this park that I used to so often play there with my friends. It was
such
a lovely park full of play
materials and it had this lovely river with ducks and swans always
swimming on it. It was a park
always filled with children and their parents from the
neighborhood. I loved
visiting the place with my mum and siblings mainly because we enjoyed
playing in the sand and
feeding the ducklings. Last Tuesday when I was walking down the street,
I encountered a very happy scene,
which reminded me of my own childhood. It was a scene of
school children running
around and playing in the sand dunes on a park. They looked so happy
and content. To me, it seemed
that they were having a time of their lives, and the happy, excited
sounds of these children
remained with me throughout the day. Sadly enough, during the night as
I lay down on my bed, it
occurred to me that, that was the first time in years that I had seen the
park filled with children.
The park no longer, over the years, had as many children playing there
as it used to have. Through
observation I have come to realize that though play is still found in
the lives of some children,
not all children now enjoy the sort of play that I saw today. Most
children now spend most of
their time watching Television or playing video games instead of
going outdoor to play for a
while. This, unfortunately, has become a modern trend around the
globe. This realization hit me so hard that I
decided to write this piece in an effort to bring to
attention the effects of
television viewing on the lives of the children of today and as to whether
we, as concerned parents,
should place an age restriction on television viewing.
Television
viewing has had a profound effect on the environment of the child of
today. John Dowey the great
education innovator once said, “The environment teaches.” What he
basically meant by that
simple statement is that what surrounds the child also teaches the child.
In today’s world of screen
technologies, the media environment becomes increasingly pervasive
and increasingly an important
teacher for our children. Consider the statistics: By age eighteen,
students will have spent at
least 22,000 hours watching television–compared to 11,000 hours in
twelve years of classroom
instruction. (1) Before kindergarten, pre-schoolers will have spent
more time watching TV than a
college student spends in four years of classes, about 5,000 hours.
(2) The average elementary
school age of child watches TV four-five hours a day. (3) Combined
with playing video games or
computer games, watching rented videos, and going to the movie
theaters, the accumulated
time American children spend in front of visual screens is staggering.
These are not the only
statistics presented by the U.S. Surgeon’s General’s committee, but there
are also statistics from the
world organizations and N.G.O’s who are equally concerned and
alarmed by the amount of time
spent by children in front of a TV screen.
In
August this year a report came out on the effect of television viewing on the
health of children who watch
TV four-five hours a day. The results, as published in the August
edition of Healthline magazine(
one of the most renowned US health resources), showed that
television viewing has a
significant effect on lowering the metabolic rate of obese and normal-
weight children. This
research was conducted by expert researchers at University of Tennessee,
Knoxville. In a laboratory
setting, 15 obese and 17 normal-weight children, age 8 to 12 were
tested while at rest and
while viewing non-violent, passive programs on television. The
metabolic rate in for both
groups was significantly lower watching television than resting. More
significantly it was lower for obese children who tend to watch more TV. The researchers
concluded that television
viewing is a risk for obesity, because the resting energy expenditures of
children watching TV lower
than if they did nothing at all and almost as low when they were
sleeping. They further
suggested that television viewing may reduce physical activity and
increase the consumption of
snack and high-fat foods, contributing even more to obesity. Over-
use of the TV-screen
frequently means under-use of young cardiovascular systems. To develop
heathy young hearts, lungs,
and muscles, children need regular exercise. There is the increasing
fear that the child, who
spends more time in front of a Television set, is more likely to increase
his/her risk of becoming
obese thereby increasing the risk of having cardiovascular diseases. This
fear has been confirmed by
the American Academy of Pediatrics. In a report issued by them, it
has been revealed that “up to
50% of school age children are not getting enough exercise to
develop healthy hearts and
lungs, and that 40% of youngsters between ages five and eight exhibit
two risk factors for heart
disease. The risks climbs the more they watch.
Another
effect of television viewing on children is that it displaces language
expression, reading and
listening to complex language structures. When children are watching
TV they are not usually
talking and thus not learning to express themselves and ideas. They
certainly are not reading and
exercising their imaginations. Although they are listening to words
spoken on the screen, most of
these what they listen to are sound bites lacking enough linguistic
complexity to build their
language abilities. When children under research conditions watch a TV
program whose auditory tract
differs from visual images, many times what they remember as the
“story” is the visual
display. However, anytime a child is immersed in conversation, reading, or
concentrated listening, more
active engagement of the child is required. For instance reading of a
bedtime story to a child
engages the child in activating his/her own visual imagination inside her
head, not watching someone
else’s images. The child learns to focus and concentrate his/her
attention on complex language
and ideas. Language development is very important to the
development of a child under
twelve. As suggested by Dr. Gloria
Degaeteno MD. Ed., a child
psychologists and
educationist, in her book Raising Media Literate Children, “busy
parents
should consider investing on
an audio tape recorder and obtaining story tapes from the local
library for additional
language input.” This goes to show how
important it is for our children
develop their language
ability.
Marie
Winn, a renowned child’s writer and a mother of two sons, made this
observation too. In her book,
Children Without Childhood,
she observed that the child of a
generation ago read the
satirical magazine National hampoon. He spent his typical Saturday
afternoon climbing around a
construction site. He would jump off a garage roof unto an old sofa
and after, have a crab apple
war with a friend and mow the lawn. The agenda for today’s child,
however, is to sleep late,
watch TV all day long, have a tennis lesson, go to the shopping mall to
buy albums and new video game
CD’s, and play electronic WWW II. Winn in her books tries to
point out the fact that
television viewing in the life of today’s child is fast turning our children
into adults. Adults because
children now engage in sexual practices even before and at the age of
twelve. Nine year-olds now
worry about sexuality. Thanks to
television, marijuana and alcohol,
to sixth graders, are common
social accessories. Children from
school, flick through TV
channels to see what is
playing, just like what weary adults do after a hard day’s work. All over
and around us, we can no
longer distinguish a twelve-year-old from a young adult. They all wear
makeup, and act like adults
because they might have seen an advertisement in a newspaper,
showing a sultry female,
wearing dark lipstick, excessive eye-shadow,
and a mink coat, bearing
a glaring sign that reads
“would you believe I am only ten?”All this is due to the heavy influence
of television and other
electronic gadgets that rule the child’s life. This is a new era which no
longer distinguishes children
from parents but encourages parents and children as at the same
age.
Television
viewing is not bad after all, most children do enjoy some of the
educative programs it shows.
For eg., Sesame Street and Cartoon Network channels are good
sources of entertainment and
play. Sesame street is been known in the history of television
viewing to be one of the most
successful educational programs to be aired. It has tremendous
educational benefits. Not only do these programs entertain but
they do engage children in certain
play activities.Children do
need variety in play and these programs are interesting and healthy.
Such programs are what should
be encouraged and promoted if our children are going to watch
television. Again, the American Academy of Pediatrics
has recommended that action-packed TV
may produce a different
response than the passive programs most television shows take the form
of. The programs on
television ought to be structured such as to engage children in real play. In
his research article, Francis
Wardle the renowned writer of Getting Back To The Basic’s of
Child’s Play argues that play is not only critical for future
Academic success, but also for
children emotional concerns,
as well as interaction with their environment. Play which is defined
as “ that which involves a
free choice activity that is nonliteral, self motivated, enjoyable and
process orientated.”(Wardle,
1987, page 27). This means that the usage of time, the use of
materials, the environment,
rules of play activity and roles of the participants are all made up by
the children playing. They
are based on the child’s sense of reality.
Other reasons for play
include the following:
1) It provides a variety of
opportunities for children to engage in social play, which are the best
mechanisms for progressing
through different social stages.
2) Play helps children to
manipulate their environment to create things and experiment with
objects. eg., playing in the
sand, building towers and cities with blocks.
3)Play games with rules like
soccer, baseball, etc. help children to progress from an egocentric
view of the world to understanding the importance of social contracts and rules. For instance
play teaches the idea
that the game of life has rules(laws)
that we must all follow to function
productively. Don’t we all
wish play as an important activity in the lives of our children?
Unfortunately,
this is not the case as at now. Even when children watch television,
they do not watch programs
like Sesame Street and Cartoon Network, they rather prefer
to watch
programs like Batman and
Mortal Combat which occupy all their time. Quite recently, I had my
two nephews, aged three and
six, come to stay with us from London. They brought with them a
stack of Batman videos. For a
couple of weeks they did nothing except to watch the Batman
series repeatedly again. They
barely moved from the TV screen when they returned from school
and grew more addicted to the
TV. I would sometimes observe them and compare it with my
own childhood and ask myself
these questions. “ What will become of them in the future?” “ Are
they going to grow up and
fulfill all the psychological aspect of their life that play provides them
with?” These, I have come to
realize, are the very questions most concerned parents are now
asking themselves.
The
answer to these questions lies within us and the government. There is the
need now, for the government,
to structure a policy, which will restrict television viewing to
children below the age of sixteen. Some amount of television
viewing should be allowed to them
but the hours spent and
programs watched should be regulated and monitered. Non-educative
programs which portray
childhood badly and encourage children to become more like adults
should be restricted from
them. All children’s programs ought to contain activities which would
engage the child in various
indoor and outdoor activities. This would enable children to have lots
of play and develop wide integrated foundation
required for future academic success. There
should also be a policy to
control how much time a child below the age of sixteen, can spend
behind a computer playing
computer games and surfing through the Internet. Hopefully if these
measures are taken, children
would no longer have to watch adulterated versions of childhood on
the TV. They would grow up
having a safe, playful and a television-free world. This would lead
them to become more active,
less adults and more childlike in all their activities that play
provides them with. They
would be able to develop their language abilities, and reduce their
health risks.
WORKS CITED SECTION
1. DeGaetano, Gloria. Raising
Media Literate Children. New York: Longman, (1997).
2.Wardle, Francis. Getting
Back To The Basics of Child’s Play. London: Heinneman, (1987).
3. Winn, Marie. The Plug
in Drug. New York: Longman, (1977).
4. Winn, Marie. Children
Without Childhood. New York:
Penguin Book P., (1984).
5. <http://www.healthline.org/articles /9408bb.html>